'd come back to us later in the week."

"On second thought," Hastings said, "that's better. I'll talk to him
alone tomorrow--about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge
taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But," he softened
the sternness of his tone, "he must have a reason, a better one than I
can think of now." He smiled. "And I'll report to you, when he's told
me."

"I'm glad it's tomorrow," she said wearily. "I--I'm tired out."

On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: "Now, she'll
persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing--talk." Then, to bolster that
hope, he added a stern truth: "He's got to. He can't gag himself with a
pretended illness forever!"

At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again,
saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: "Not that! Not
that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He
wouldn't have understood!"

XII

HENDRICKS REPORTS

In his book-lined, "loosely furnished" apartment Sunday afternoon
Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the
grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he
pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap
of paper.

"'--edly de--,'" he worried. "That might stand for 'repeatedly demanded'
or 'repeatedly denied' or 'undoubtedly denoted' or a hundred---- But
that 'Pursuit!' is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him,
sure as you're knee-high to a hope of heaven!"

The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come
solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct.
Its positiveness partook of superstition--almost. He could not shake it
off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to
guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing.
But he kept to his conjecturing.

He had many interruptions. Newspaper reporters, instantly impressed by
the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder,
flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked
for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion
as to the probability of running down the guilty man.

He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a
simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both
Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had